Interest Areas

Culture; Law; Social Movements; Family; Gender and Sexuality.

Current Research

“The Construction and Contestation of ‘Family’ in LGBT Communities.” This project draws upon interviews and focus groups to examine the close relationships in the lives of sexual minorities and gender variant people. LGBT people are often invoked as threats to family in “family values” discourses, even as the gay rights movement focuses more than ever on a range of family issues including marriage and parenting rights. This project seeks to advance theorizing about nontraditional families.

“The Role of Cognition in the Development of Social Fragmentation, Commonalities, and Consensus.” This NSF-funded project with Professor Penny Edgell uses focus group discussions of contemporary social controversies to examine how ordinary citizens deliberate on complex issues and evaluate competing forms of expert discourse from religion, science and law.

Selected Publications

“The Evolution of Same-Sex Marriage Politics in the U.S.” Forthcoming. In Introducing the New Sexuality Studies (3rd ed.), edited by Steven Seidman and Nancy Fischer, Routledge.